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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 



Chap. 






E UNITED05TATES OF AMERICA. 



"llSiivi -■:■:. 



ORATION 



ON THE 



DEATH OF GEN. GEORGE WASHINGTON 



Addressed to the Catholic Congregation of StyMary's 
Church of Albany, by the Rev. Matthew O'Brien, 
D.D., Pastor of the same, for February 22, 1800, 
the day appointed by Congress. 



[From the Albany " Gazette," February 27, 1S00.] 










Oration on the Death of Gen. George Washington, 

Addressed to the Catholic Congregation of St. Mary's Church of 
Albany, by the Rev. Matthew O'Brien, D.D., Pastor of the 
same, for February 22, 1800, the day appointed by Congress. 

We are come together, my friends, agreeable to wish of 
government and equally so to our own inclinations to com- 
memorate the deceased founder of America's freedom; we 
are come to mingle our tears with those of the friends of vir- 
tue ; to combine our lamentations this day with the testimony 
of the public feelings at the sad catastrophe that has deprived 
the United States of the important services of the illustrious 
General Washington, and committed his mortal part to the 
silence of the tomb. 

Who is the man in the annals of the ancient world who has 
been wept by his country with sorrow more sincere? Where 
is the character that adorns the page of history so enlightened 
in council, so judicious in plan, so successful in public contest, 
and so temperate in triumph, as that which is now held up 
for your gratitude and admiration ? Oh, had his genius in- 
fluenced the destinies of France the tears and the blood of 
Europe had not been seen to flow ; the scale of public justice 
had been held with equal hand, and the cottage and the palace 
had shared a common safety. Oh, France, unhappy France, 
how has thy gold become dim, how is the most line gold 
changed, the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top 
of every street, from the daughter of Sion all her beauty is 
departed,* for the days of thy visitation have passed by thee 
unregarded ; now tyrants lord it over thee — thy faith trans- 
ferred to strangers. From thy fall may America be confirmed 
in truth and temperance, and take lessons against the woes 
that irreligion must produce. 

* Lamentations of Jeremiah, eta. 4 and I. 



Inadequate to the task and unqualified by ray character for 
-the business of political dissertation, I shall not attempt a por- 
trait of the illustrious man, nor enumerate his achievements 
whose loss we now deplore : the former has nearly exhausted 
the power of human eloquence ; the most brilliant tints of 
oratory have yet left it incomplete ; the latter is engraven, not 
in letters of marble, my brethren, which time might crumble 
out or ignorance mistake, but in the never-fading characters 
that speak a nation's gratitude — in the praises that have been 
echoed from the boundaries of the universe. 

Hence, my brethren, I shall only beg to fix your attention, 
in a few words, on the duties of citizens as they peculiarly re- 
gard our countrymen, and shall close this admonition with 
some religious considerations. 

We have come into this country from motives of preference, 
and in common we experience the advantages of protection : 
whether our own country could serve us and would not ; 
whether she could befriend us and would not ; in a word, the 
nature of the causes that have fixed our residence here, makes 
nothing essential in our political predicament ; nor can it af- 
fect the good wishes we owe to the government. America 
has opened her bosom to receive us ; she is scrupulously at- 
tentive to the claims of the industrious ; she is the protectress 
of arts and sciences ; the asylum of the helpless, and she covers 
all our rights with the arm of equal justice. 

Where is the country, my friends, where liberty is better 
defended or the clime more propitious to her progress and 
luxuriance than this in which we now prosper and find secu- 
rity ? Here power is deprived of the destructive faculty of 
perpetuating insult and the brow of opulence is unclouded 
and serene ; here wretchedness is scarcely known even to the 
indolent and undeserving, and activity and temperance are 
the certain springs of fortune ; here the uniform rotation of 
the political machine returns the lofty statesman to the hum- 
ble situation of the private citizen, and raising him in his turn 
through the points of public confidence, gives talent a fair trial, 



prevents the fends and jealousies that exceptions would pro- 
duce and the arrogance and oppression that might grow from 
stationary greatness. 

Could in y feeble accents convey well to your minds the 
abundant advantages of this constitution ; the justice and the 
fortitude that presided at her birth ; the temperance that 
formed her strength, and the prudence that marked her prog- 
ress in the unshaken magnanimity and disinterested councils of 
the illustrious General Washington, whose hand has directed 
the flight of the Eagle and whose virtues increase the brill- 
iancy of the Hesperian constellation, with me you would de- 
voutly wish that our country had produced him. Yet not so, 
my brethren, your well wishes are too affectionate to your 
adopted country ; envy can have no place in the bosom that 
glows with gratitude; God"s providence has produced him to 
confer him on our friends, and our virtues will entitle us to a 
share in what he purchased. 

What then can be desired to engage our affections to the 
constitution of the United States of America, and excite our 
respect and gratitude for the work of the great Washington ? 
do not the emigrations almost from every country here and 
the rapidity of the increase of opulence and population, speak 
more than many volumes the prerogatives of this country 
which the Almighty has thought good to point out for our 
abodes ? are not our individual fortunes integral parts of the 
public weal? must not then their ruin be nearly menaced in 
the misfortunes that would reach the government, since the 
general welfare must be the aggregate of individual loyalty, 
and general calamity in the corruption of the social parts ? is 
it not evident, my friends, that the various individuals of 
which society is composed must look to the joint effort of all 
as to the means of preservation and happiness ? has not the 
social compact for object the protection of the weak against 
the encroachments of the strong, and the assurance of those 
assistances which our necessities require ? Whatever, there- 
fore, tends to disunite must prove pernicious to the entire, 



and destructive of the objects it would be given to pro- 
mote. 

How then, my brethren, give our confidence to the enemies 
of public happiness, and not close our ears against their im- 
pertinent murmurs, who would instil into every mind the 
poison of disaffection by misconstruing the intentions of our 
most exalted public characters and miscoloring their best 
actions '. do we not know that the collective wisdom of a gov- 
ernment is more to be relied on than the turgid declamations 
of those political quacks who are scattered about our streets, 
and crammed into every drinking-house ; who are sported off 
as puppets by the hand behind the curtain ; whose accents are 
the dictates of the tongue, which is not theirs, whilst the drift 
is to dissension, to irreligion and to anarchy ! Can men certainly 
pronounce on the nature of any action without weighing the 
motives that have concurred to excite it? Is it probable that 
the complicated connections between country and country, 
the variety of incidents that must occasionally affect them ; the 
urgency of their interests, and the diversity of their wants, 
can be known to the private citizen as they are to the State : 
if not, my friends, and that it is not the case all rational men 
must allow, the presumption of the individual must be in 
favor of the administration, and his disdain should always 
meet the asseverations of her enemies. 

If here, it should be objected, that these principles would 
prove too much, and go to inculcate the doctrine of passive 
obedience to the will of the legislature, I must candidly allow 
that when they apply to any special portion of the comin unity 
they rigorously enforce them ; but they preclude not at the 
same time neither the right nor the exercise of respectful ex- 
postulation, should any part of the entire feel itself neglected 
or aggrieved, nor do they apply to the hypothesis of a glaring 
and evident conflict between the will of man and the law of 
God, which since the extinction of the tyranny which scourged 
the primitive church, has been principally realized in the 
methodical abominations of our modern illuminati, who sac- 



6 

rilegiously calumniate the gospel of Christ and stupidly ob- 
trude that death is an eternal sleep. 

Convinced, Christian auditors, of your heartfelt detestation 
of their infernal sophistry ; of the love you bear your adopted, 
country, and of the importance you attach to the duties of 
subordination, I shall refrain from many words on the subject 
now before you ; I shall not urge your attention to the anarchy 
that has torn the bosom of France; to the impiety that has 
overturned her altar and her throne ; nor to the tears and the 
blood that have flowed from every part, to prepare her un- 
happy soil for the roots of her bastard liberty ; to excite your 
abhorrence for the upshot of her refinements, and guard you 
against the wiles of her tinselled philosophists ; I need not 
stimulate your loyalty by the example of our countrymen 
who bled for America's freedom under the banners of her 
hero ; nor tell you that the constitution of the eighteen 
hundredth year is the same which they cherished with 
persevering fervor ; to revive in you their sentiments which 
you glory to inherit ; but pray you to attend to the coinci- 
dence of your religious principles with the duties you resolve 
to practice. Our hoi\ 7 religion informs us that all power is 
from God ; * that every soul must be subject to superior 
powers; that resistance against power is rebellion against 
Heaven ; we see that these doctrines are not confined to times 
or persons, but that they are general in their import, for the 
entire as for the part, and have their lustre and coniirmation 
in the conduct of Jesus Christ, though the gifted with intrinsic 
royalty and judge of the living and dead, rigourously con- 
formed to pay tribute to the sovereign prince, f and com- 
manded his disciples to observe all what he had done. 

These practical maxims of our Saviour are among the most 
distinctive traits of the religion you profess, for, as she is 
Catholic in the approved application of the term, her prin- 
ciples are friendly to every established government, nor can 

* Rom. 13. t Luke 30. 



they be affected by any difference of worship or stamp of 
administration ; her soul is tilled with charity for all men ; 
enlightened by the faith she has received from Christ Jesus, 
she treads the narrow path which conducts to his blessed 
realms; her hopes are in his promises; her strength is in his 
merits ; she dreads no censorial dictate, because she is con- 
scious of her internal rectitude ; her countenance is only 
bright when she is encircled by all the virtues. 

Shield any man, my friends, from the shafts of public 
justice, and banish from his bosom the blessed principles of 
the gospel, what security can you have for his loyalty, his 
probity, or any other of the social or private virtues ? Yainly 
shall you display the beauties of a constitution, the wisdom of 
its ministers, the advantages she insures, and the wicked and 
black intrigues of her atrocious and vile opponents, if religion 
has not the guidance of his sentiments and conduct. Let the 
frigid philosophist argue as he chooses about the sufficiency of 
his sense of honor, the eternal distinction between right and 
wrong, virtue's intrinsic charms and amiability, the horror of 
the aspect and the odiousness of vice, no impressions can 
be lasting and invariably correct, but those which are in some 
manner ordinate to conscience ; and as the energy of civil 
law arises either from the fear of punishment or hope of re- 
ward, it can never prove efficient when darkness covers the 
place of operation : he, therefore, alone will prove faithful to 
every duty who is every moment conscious that he moves in 
the presence of a scrutinizing God, with whom the most 
secret thought puts on the publicity of the mid-day action, 
the Hash of whose omniscience pervades both heaven and 
hell, and the rigor of whose judgments shall be known to 
men and angels. 

Here, therefore, my brethren, while we acknowledge the 
conscientious necessity of being observant of the law, and the 
influence of our religious principles on the accomplishment of 
our civil duties, we surely ought not to forget the more im- 
portant considerations that should prepare us for the here- 



after : For we have not in this world a permanent abode, 
but are called to an eternal residence in the heavenly Jeru- 
salem. Look back, I beseech you, to the variety of objects 
that have disappeared before you, and conclude from their 
baseless fabric, to the short-lived vapor of those that shall 
succeed them. Oh ! whither have flown our past pleasures 
and our hopes? Alas! nothing of them is ours, but there- 
morse they have entailed ! The time will shortly come 
when this remnant of our existence shall prove ideal as the 
past, and our sublunary all shall be a coffin and a winding 
sheet; then religion alone shall advocate our interests, and 
nothing shall count for us but the works we shall have done 
for God ! 

It has been decreed by heaven that all men once must die. 
We feel the seeds of death now jar within our bosoms ; the 
tide of life flows rapidly away, and death shall close the scene 
of all ambition's prospects. Raise, therefore, our affections, 
O Almighty and beneiicent God, and fix them on the happiness 
thou hast prepared for us beyond the grave. Impress upon 
our hearts the dread of thy just judgments, and prepare us 
for our inheritance in thy Kingdom, which is Heaven. Con- 
firm America's lawgivers, in the wisdom of her Washington t 
Convert her enemies, or confound their machinations ! Bless 
and increase her friends, and animate her Heroes. 



